Clinton is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the municipality of Central Huron. Clinton was established in 1831, when Jonas Gibbings and brothers Peter and Stephen Vanderburg cleared out a small area to start.[1] Clinton started to grow in 1844 when William Rattenbury laid out the plans to begin making a village. In 1954, Clinton's population was 2,625 people. Today, it has an estimated population of 3201.[2]

Clinton New Era from November 14, 1918. End of the First World War.

Clinton is known as Canada's home of radar and has a huge radar antenna in the downtown due to its association with RCAF Station Clinton during World War II. Clinton was known as The Corners or "Rattenbury Corner" in its earlier days.

The School On Wheels, a school car that visited remote Northern Ontario communities to educate children who would otherwise not have access to school, is permanently on display in Clinton as a museum about education.[3]

Clinton was the home of the highly influential 19th-century ethnologist and anthropologistHoratio Hale, who involved himself locally in real estate development and other business and educational endeavours. Several of the streets in the centre of the town were personally named by him.[4] Hale is interred in the municipal cemetery north of the community.

Contents

Clinton was established in 1831, when Jonas Gibbings and brothers Peter and Stephen Vanderburg cleared out a small area to start. It was named after Sir Henry Clinton, who distinguished himself during the Peninsular War. Clinton started to grow in 1844 when William Rattenbury laid out the plans to begin making a village. Soon after, people began buying land from Rattenbury as well as the Gibbings.[1]

In 1959, the Clinton area was shocked by the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper. Her remains were discovered in a local woodlot near RCAF Station Clinton on June 11, 1959. A local youth, Stephen Truscott (aged 14 years at the time), was falsely convicted of the crime and sentenced to be executed. After a 48-year struggle to clear his name, Truscott was finally acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal on August 28, 2007.

In 1978, a protest by church members demanded that three titles be censored from high school reading lists: Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, J.D Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.[9] A meeting with the Huron County Board of Education, based in Clinton, was attended by prominent Canadian writers including Alice Munro along with local church members.[10] The school board voted to ban The Diviners from the five high schools within its jurisdiction because of sexual references and objectionable language.[11] This event prompted the Book and Periodical Council of Canada to for a Freedom of Expression Committee later that year and was the driving factor behind a library-driven Freedom to Read week, which continues to occur across Ontario libraries.[9]